Car Audio Security Open Day

In these times of greater challenges for mobile electronics dealers, Adam Rayner visits one who keeps things cooking. It’s the lads Dahn Heefrow way
The first one of these open events I attended was for the trade magazine now known as Mobile Electronics News. In a bout of pompous ignorance I was looking forward to having to be nice but not look like I wasn’t impressed. After all, how could it be as cool as any ‘proper’ car show? Well, when you are wrong you’re wrong and I was spectacularly ill-informed on this one. For Raj and his lads are a bit of a centre of excellence.

 
Once based in the Tottenham Court Road, London in what was the closest we had to Tokyo city’s Akihabara district where they sell consumer electronics in a mad agglomeration that is amazing to the average Westerner for its sheer scale and breadth of choice a few years back they opened up the out-of-the-city outfit. Now, despite its location off Pump Lane in Hayes by the bypass being a bit hard to find without navigation on board, they now do more and better trade at the industrial unit shop than they do at the city centre shop.
So there I was, arriving in the shadow of Heathrow airport with my trade mag reporters hat on, only to be met be the entirety of the best demo cars the whole mobile electronics trade in the UK has to offer. And I mean everybody.
Now it its third year, the show had its own website and promised a slew of demo cars. The facts are that for each and every maker that is present, the CAS outfit are an important dealer for them and this makes it a top place for them to show. With more seriously ready-to-buy folks coming along than at most ‘big’ car shows.
So they all go.
This year I went along with camera and notepad for both Talk Audio and Fast Car and had a blast. (although my bad snappery isn’t good enough for FC so they sent their own professional, of course.) It was kind of hard to speak to anyone or even hear the usually dull ruminations in one’s own head as the sheer SPL was breath taking.
Sucking the shop’s mains 240v electrical system to death to feed its 560 Amperes continuous 12V DC power supply was the 22,000w Kicker Hummer. Still bloody ridiculously loud and clear and a great excuse to have a listen and finally go and edit the review I did of their components. Also on the same juice supply and from the same Armour Automotive people was the fabulous 3,000w Mutant XXX RX8. A lot of speakers and loads of bass.
There nestled alongside were cars from Midbass the Vibe Astra with 7,400w and the mad little Fli Civic that can rip your head apart with its array of six by nine tweeters all lined up in the rear show build. That’s another 3,400 watts.
The posh BMW M3 with its 400w RMS install and the AMG CLS55 with the 1,300w install inside both belonged to customers of CAS. The SQ+ built Infinity BMW is still just beautiful and it’s a tragedy that SQ+ are doing no more of this sort of thing now but the Vibe R8 nearby was just sex on wheels. I loved the R8 in the movie Iron Man. It’s an icon already.
 
Another iconic car is the Scoobaroo belonging to JBL with its bonkers 6,000w Crown derived professional grade amplifier inside. It’s the size of a suitcase. Love the paint job on this one. The original Kicker pickup first installed by Brian Tally and Andy Pilgrim for Kicker UK is now owned by CAS and was bumping its 3,500 watts away happily in the car park.
There was a nest of Orion cars. The stupendously loud and deeply wobbling Golf that also belongs to CAS and drops an easy 150dB was rocking as was the cheaper Subaru from Orion’s new VFM Cobalt equipment that kicks savage arse for the silly cheap money it costs. There was a brace of 12 inch subs, three tweeters, four midbasses and amplification to kick their collective butts in the car all for around £500 retail. I was impressed.
Of course, sat next to them like a sleeping dragon was Ian Iceman Pinder’s scary geological fault-splitter of an Astra van. He was on a surprise-sprung birthday treat weekend abroad as it was a ‘Big-Oh’ birthday and the van runs only under his hands. He’d sooner let you use his toothbrush or let you (self-edited at this point for reasons of good taste) And that’s another 29,300 watts-worth to drool over.
Four’s Porsche might well have been the most audiophile car at the event with a simple set of Hertz comps on a seriously sexy class A/AB/D Audison amplifier (see the news – this is all new) being driven by a high end P88 Pioneer deck. Pioneer were represented themselves by their lovely new bloke Grish, who gets to drive the Paul Richardson installed (Car Audio Innovations Audi convertible as part of his new job. Lucky git. It’s him at the end of the walkthrough video and I think I called him just that on camera.
Lined up next to the Pioneer Audi were a superbly sexy and of course very red Ferrari and the SQ+ installed Alpine Golf. Inside in the shop itself was the Kenwood Subaru with its perpangular lighting glowing and flickering in the cool dim interior of the shop, which was bloody HEAVING!
If you spent a certain amount you got a cloth goodie bag with all sorts of bits inside like pens and a flash drive and a heap of glossies about various brands’ kit Raj told me it was ‘A £40 value’. Which was why I didn’t dare try to nick one.
Besides, I kind of think he needed all of them for customers.
I worked out that with no silly estimates of power of the SQ+ Infinity car, the Vibe R8 and the actual figure for the JBL Scooby, it’s a within 5% guess to say that there was around sixty-five thousand watts worth of live car HiFi systems in the place. And that’s RMS, not peak.
And that’s the highest ‘Power Density’ (to use an Alpine Electronics term) I’ve ever wandered through in my life.

And here’s a funny bit, added much later…
I removed and deleted the video of this event from YouTube as the Mutant car was so loud and overpoweringly clear that Warner Brothers’ music analyser ‘heard’ it and asked to add their advertising or else I had to remove it. I chose to remove it.

Adam Rayner.
 
And here’s where to click to see a funky cool slideshow in the newly imported gallery system. We LOVE this! If you go to the gallery itself from the menus above you can get at the fuller size versions of you want to nick any….
link